abff08f4813c

Came here to say this. I wouldn't be surprised if he became obese because of the 33 years he put into the job, always working and not having enough time to himself to self-care.

This is awful. He was sentenced to four years but ended up serving five. One wonders if the false confession actually helped reduce the time at all in that case. (I don't doubt that he would have signed anyways, not after being deprived of food and water and being beaten for two days straight, but still... it's even worse if signing was pointless.)

Thank you! This is exactly why folks should comment and not just only downvote.

Those who actually read the article know that E.M. is a woman and the victim who is giving testimony (and whose full name can't be released pubicly), no connection at all to Musk aside from coincidentally sharing the same initials. But for illustration she might be named Ellen Marks, Eva Manns, Ellie Monet, etc.

I must say that it's the rare case that I see an upvoted comment on the fediverse that, behind a veil of ignorance ( https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/veil-of-ignorance ), agrees with Israel-supporting Jewish biologist and professor Jerry A. Coyne on anything. ( As per https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/10/15/a-few-thoughts-on-the-war/ he also no longer finds a two-state solution viable. )

With that in mind I'm deeply troubled by one of the comments made in the comments section of the linked article.

Tuvi Todd
A "2-State Solution" would be a step backwards, where now there are already 3 states:
- a peace-loving Jewish State of Israel,
- a terror sponsoring PA "state" in the "West Bank", and
- a war criminal PA "state" in Gaza/

But this is completely wrong and bonkers. The middle comment is the most off, the West Bank is under Israeli military control and the nominal authority, the Palestine Authority, doesn't exercise any actual control over the territory (as it should be).

The third comment is also off, as neither Gaza or Hamas are independently recognized by any country as a state, and unlike the Palestine Authority lack status or any sort of recognition in the UN. (Also Hamas explicitly rejects the authority of the PA from what I understand, so calling it a PA state is also too much of a stretch.)

Only the first comment is accurate in terms of statehood - but I can't really agree with the peace-loving comment.

And, the last two should receive no international assistance, unless they end their support for
"The Palestinian Resistance" of murder, terrorism, and war crimes.

But the PA did - https://www.jfeed.com/news-israel/spzypn

{A} - The Jewish State of Israel targets only Islamic Jihadist militants in northern Gaza attacks, who
-2- Use schools, hospitals, cities, and civilians as human-shield, and thus {B} - Only Gaza's Islamic Jihadist militants are responsible for all the subsequent -2- Killings of over 50,000 Palestinians in Gaza attacks

I feel that this ignores a lot - in particular the recent news report of a hospital being mistakenly misidentified as hosting a hidden underground military base - because it got confused with a school that was next to the hospital that had some odd markings, https://news.sky.com/story/gaza-hospital-attack-analysis-contradicts-israels-evidence-justifying-airstrike-13367823

Or the concerns from Holocaust survivors such as Veronika Cohen about how the war is hurting innocent Gazan children, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/25/we-have-lost-our-humanity-holocaust-survivors-call-for-end-to-war-in-gaza

So a couple of thoughts here.

First of all, the page itself just correctly warns that orcas can't just be freed. It's not like we should go ahead and literally dump them into the ocean and abandon them. No one is advocating for this. Doing this generally with most types of animals still causes all kinds of problems (see for example https://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/07/23/snakehead.poison/index.html )

On the flip side, when a well prepared effort is launched, captive orcas have survived in the wild successfully. See https://killerwhales.fandom.com/wiki/Vasilievna for a good example - and this is what folks are pushing for.

Finally, I have some concerns about the source itself. From https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Environmental/_Literacy/_Council it seems that enviroliteracy.org is part of the George C. Marshall Institute.

In case you don't know much about that institute, here's the most important bits:

The George C. Marshall Institute (GMI) is a "non-profit" organization funded by the profits from oil and gas interests and right-wing funders (listed later). It has received substantial funding from Exxon's Exxon Education Foundation.
Its nominal creators, aside from Exxon-related entities and others, were William Nierenberg, Frederick Seitz and Robert Jastrow. This industry and right-wing front group

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=George%5C_C.%5C_Marshall%5C_Institute

The article doesn't really explain why though.

Captive-born dolphins have been successfully released into the wild before, see for example: https://www.thedodo.com/another-seaworld-myth-debunked-751539462.html

"Annessa, a captive-born Atlantic bottle-nose dolphin held at the Dolphin Research Center in the Florida Keys, disappeared and was feared lost during a hurricane in August, 1992. Annessa survived the hurricane, however, and was adopted by a pod of wild dolphins. She has been sighted numerous times - healthy and foraging on her own. One dolphin; Captive since birth; followup successful."

Edit: Oops https://whalescientists.com/captive-dolphins-release/ were still wild born. Replaced with a better example

They can be, albeit that it may require some serious $$$ to actually do it the right way, but it's been done before, the most famous example being https://www.worldanimalprotection.us/latest/blogs/story-keiko-first-captive-orca-returned-wild/

Edit: and for dolphins born in captivity, see https://www.thedodo.com/another-seaworld-myth-debunked-751539462.html

I mean it's not really needed in Europe where true legal rights exist for employees, right?

This is more of a "only in the USA" kind of thing.

My solution to this is that I accept the other job offer, and I don't quit until the night before I start my first day in the new one. As a result I've never spent a single day unemployed. If something I'm counting on doesn't come through I'm already at my backup plan.

If companies won't be loyal to us in this way, why do we owe any loyalty to them in return?

I hear what you're saying. Just remember that Cygnus Solutions and Red Hat, both prominent commercial supporter of FOSS, were based in and headquartered in the US when they were independent companies. (Now they're both part of IBM.)

Even the Linux Foundation and the Free Software Foundation have to obey US sanctions - LF is based in San Francisco and the FSF is based in Boston.

Going FOSS is good, but the US abusing their sanctions powers is a different kettle of fish.

The reponse is going balls deep on Foss but I don't think your avg westoid regime is willing to open that Pandora's box.

I mean, GMail is from Google who uses Linux/GNU extensively (as per https://www.computerworld.com/article/1612523/the-story-behind-google-s-in-house-desktop-linux.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16175182 )

Even M$ supports using Outlook on Linux/GNU via the webapps (see https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/microsoft-365-and-outlook-for-linux/0eeaef13-c337-4c92-8260-8ac7fdf4df9f ) and back in the day they ran Hotmail on FreeBSD ( see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31113296 )

The issue here isn't the use of FOSS per se but that these folks aren't tech savvy and don't want to run things themselves - they'd rather pay someone else to do it. They want "enterprise customer support" and all that. And then whoever they pay might end up bailing out due to fear of US sanctions ... which sadly even Swiss banks aren't immune to.

Either EU can do it now or later

The sooner they stop/prevent/workaround the abuse of power by the US here, the better.

The US should no longer be allowed to lead the international banking system. Under the current administration, they've proven that they can't be trusted with that kind of power anymore.